Madrid, Spain
by khohen1
Summary: (pre-slash) They're young, they're virile, and one of them might be gay.


Title: Madrid, Spain  
  
Rated: PG-13, pre-slash  
  
Notes: It's wishful thinking and conjecture, I know, but Dan and Casey would be so yum together.  Big thanks to 57channels for pointing out that I meant virile and not virulent… you have her to thank for about five more lines of dialogue too… funny ones even.  Thanks 57!  (I hate it when I do that, put in the wrong words, I feel like such a 'tard afterwards.)****

**Madrid, Spain**

"We are two young men, Casey," Dan said, taking a seat across from Casey and raising his glass in a toast.

"We are indeed," Casey said, smiling widely and nodding.

"We're two young men in Madrid," Dan said, his grin widening.

"In Madrid, Spain," Casey said, laughing at Dan's exuberance.

"Two, single, young men…"

"Only…"

"Only what," Dan asked, frowning as Casey interrupted him in a way that lead him to believe he was about to rain on Dan's proverbial parade.

"Only, we're not that young," Casey said, shrugging.

"Oh, we're young, my friend," Dan said, nodding.  "In a world where scientific research and modern medicine has made it possible for the majority of our species to exist into their hundred's, we are young."

"The majority does not, in fact, live into their hundred's, Danny," Casey said, taking a sip of his beer.  "The majority of our species makes it into their eighties, less into their nineties, and a bare minimum into their hundreds."

"Ah," Dan said, shaking his head, not to be deterred.  "But with the scientific advances, Casey.  With the advances there is an entire possibility that by the time you and I reach the age that would be closer to 100 than we are now, by that time it could be a majority."

"I can not deny this," Casey said, giving Dan the point.  "I can not agree with it, but I can not deny it."

"So," Dan said, raising his glass once more and his grin widening even further.  "We are two single, young, virulent men in the prime of our lives…"

"Prime I will agree with."

"The prime of our lives, Casey."

"On location in Madrid, Spain, Danny," Casey said, his friend's exuberance quite catching.

"And I say, we are men, and we are virulent, and we are young…"

"Indeed," Casey said, laughing again and taking yet another gulp of his beer, his gaze landing on Dan's sunlit profile.  "Except you mean virile."

"What?"

Casey laughed.  "We're young, and we're virile… not virulent."

"What's virulent?"

"Poisonous."

"Ah," Dan said, nodding.  "Virile then."

"Yes."

"And we are going to meet women."

Casey nodded.  "There is a definite possibility of you and I meeting women."

"Spanish women, Casey," Dan said, nodding again and leaning in closer to his friend.  "Spanish women with fire-engine red dresses and flowers in their hair and fast tongues…"

"Fast tongues," Casey questioned, laughing.

"Fast tongues for a complex language, Casey," Dan said, nodding and winking.  "And you and I know what fast tongues can do to a man on location in Madrid, Spain."

"So I ask you, then, this one question," Casey said, sitting up and leaning forward to meet Dan's gaze.  "In Madrid… where are all the women, Danny?"

Dan frowned, looking around.  "They are around, my young friend…"

"Yes," Casey said, nodding.  "But where?"

"They are…" Dan paused, looking around again.  "At this very moment they are not within our vicinity, Casey, but they are in fact around."

"I'm just saying, Danny," Casey said, smiling and licking his lips.  "A week we've been here, and I'm just saying… where are all the women?"

Dan sighed, sitting back slightly.  "I've been wondering the same thing, dude."

"Danny," Casey said, running his hand through his hair and clearing his throat.  

"Yes, Casey," Dan said, his effervescent smile back in place despite the slight setback in the lack of currently available women.

"I'm in love with you," he said softly, watching Dan as he still looked around, craning his neck to find the object of his desires.

"You are in love…"  Dan suddenly halted, his head jerking around to face Casey.  "You're…"

"I'm in love with you," Casey said again, smiling and nodding his head.

"Casey…"

"I know," Casey said, laughing.

"Dude…"

"Believe me, I know," he said, sitting back in his chair and taking another gulp from his beer, frowning as he tasted the bitterness of backwash.

Dan's smile had faded by now and was replaced by the look of a deer caught in headlights.  "You're in love with me."

"Yes."

"You're in love with me?"

Casey sighed, rubbing his hand over his face.  "Just because you keep repeating it doesn't mean I'm going to take it back, Danny."

"Casey…"

"I know, Danny."

Dan cleared his throat, his hand reaching up to shield the sunlight that was skewing his vision of Casey's face.  He cleared his throat again and looked at Casey through slightly haunted eyes.  "Define love."

"Danny, you know damn well what love…"

"Define it, Casey," Dan said sternly, his gaze hardening.  "I want to hear you define it."

"How do you define love, Danny," Casey said exasperatedly.  "Love is… it's… it's this thing, this thing that can't be defined… It's this thing that one feels that can't be explained in words so they invented a word to replace this nameless feeling… this light, airy, I wanna be with this person forever, the sight of them makes me smile, and I can't stand the thought of ever losing them… type of feeling, Danny… You know, love."

Dan's mouth worked open several times, and each time he tried to say something all that came out was a whisper of air and puff of nothing.  Finally he closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands and was able to speak once Casey was no longer in his line of vision.  "But what about all the women?"

"The women are not around, Danny, and I don't give a good god damn about all the women," Casey said breezily, watching as Dan's head tilted from side to side as if he could shake the memory of Casey's words from inside his head.

"How," Dan mumbled, still not looking up at him.  "When?"

"When, I couldn't say… and how?  I wouldn't know."

Dan looked up, his expression incredulous and not just a little pissed off.  "You're gonna have to do better than that, Casey."

"I don't know what to tell you, Dan," Casey said, shrugging.  "It's been a while since I realized, probably just before I thought we were headed for certain homelessness and joblessness with the Quo Vadimus merger.  And the how… I don't know.  Maybe cause you were always there for me.  Maybe cause you always pushed me to be the man you thought I was but I never believed in.  Maybe cause you got me a fuckin' Starland Vocal Band CD on my 30th birthday even though you hate The Starland Vocal Band but knew I loved them, Danny.  I don't fucking know, all I know is that I do, I have for a while, and I don't see it stopping any time soon."

"So why now," Dan asked, his hand covering his mouth as he stared unbelievingly at Casey.  "Why tell me now, what pushed you over the edge… cause you're not drunk.  I know when you're drunk Casey, and you're not drunk."

"I'm not drunk," Casey said, laughing and shaking his head.  "I don't know what pushed me over the edge, Danny.  I've always just been able to tell you stuff like this."

"Bullshit," Dan said, letting out a short burst of uncomfortable laughter and shaking his head, sitting further back in his seat.  "Bullshit cause we've never done 'stuff like this.'  Nothing we've discussed has ever been minutely close to 'stuff like this,' Casey."  He took a deep breath through his nose, slowly letting it out through his mouth.  "What about Dana?"

"Dana has been seeing Sam Donovan for years now, Danny," Casey said, shrugging.  "Off and on they've been seeing each other for two years, and completely on since he got back a year ago."

"But she still loves you," Dan said, swallowing slowly.  "And you've loved her…"

"But that's just it, Danny," Casey said, shaking his head.  "I don't know that I ever did."

Dan laughed, shaking his head, looking positively frightened of Casey at that very moment.  "You did, Casey… you've loved her for years…"

"I think I was more in love with the idea of her, Danny," Casey said, leaning forward and leaning his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging loosely in front of him.  "I think I was in love with the idea of a woman who loved me that much.  A woman who'd pined for me for years, through college, through Lisa, through the tough times and the tougher times that came after I thought things couldn't get any tougher… I was in love with the idea of perfect love, of an easy love."

Dan snorted.  "An easy love, huh?"

"Yes," Casey said, nodding, his eyebrows knitting together thoughtfully.  "An easy love, at the very least comparatively."

"You mean compared to Lisa," Dan said, finally able to face his friend and breathe normally since the admission had come forth.  "Dude… The Running of the Bulls is easy compared to Lisa."

Casey laughed, shaking his head.  "This is true, Danny."

"So Dana was an… an easy choice for you?  She was… a safe choice?"

"Never consciously," Casey said, holding up his hands.  "Never once did I think of it that way when I was in the middle of it. Once I was out of it though… once I started realizing I had feelings for you… once I was able to step back and take a look at it from the outside… yes, Dana was a safe choice.  We had the same background and we had the same basic values.  She was soft, and sweet, and caring, and everything Lisa wasn't."  He smiled, looking down at the ground.  "And she loved my son."

"And she's a knockout," Dan added, smiling slightly.

"That too," Casey said, nodding and looking back up at Dan.  

"But it's me you're in love with," Dan said, once again a grave look on his face.  "Me, your best friend of fifteen years, the one you've confessed all of your deepest darkest to."

"All of it except this… and now, this too," Casey said, nodding.  "And there in lies the rub."  He smiled and spread his hands.  "I can't hide anything from you, Danny… least of all this."

"But you have been, Casey," Dan said, shaking his head.  "For, apparently, two years."

"I had to be sure," Casey said, shrugging.  "I had to be sure it was that and not something else… not me wanting to be like you, not me being jealous of you, not me being confused about Dana and transposing feelings for her onto you…"

"And now?"

"And now, Danny, I'm sure of it.  I'm as sure of it as I am that this is a shitty thing to tell you on location in Madrid, Spain while you're in the midst of a 'where are all the women' speech," Casey said with a smile.

"And it took two years to do this," Dan asked, still eyeing Casey wearily.

Casey shrugged.  "No… it took about two weeks, but I went six months to be sure."

"And yet," Dan said, holding out his hand in question.  "It's been two years."

"Because I'm a chicken, Danny, you know that," Casey said, smiling a chagrinned smile.  "I tried, a thousand times, to pick the right timing, Danny.  I tried to think of how, or where, and in what way, I would tell you… but the timing… the timing never seemed…"

"Ya know what, Case," Dan said, smiling at him and lifting his drink once again.  "Timing's overrated."  

Casey smiled, pushing his glass forward to clink with Dan's and meeting his eyes.  "So we're cool," he asked.

"I don't know about cool, Casey," Dan said, the beginnings of a smirk forming on his mouth.  "But at least you didn't do it with The Starland Vocal Band playing in the background."

"Right…"  Casey laughed, nodding.  "I meant you and me, Danny… you and me, we're okay?"

"Shit, Casey," Dan said, taking the rest of his beer down in one gulp and tossing the bottle onto the grass beside his chair.  "I've been in love with you since I met you… this is the best day of my life."

"Danny," Casey said, his mouth hanging open wide.  

Dan laughed, standing up and reaching out his hand to take Casey's.  Pulling him up he looked into his eyes for a moment before grinning at him and nodding his head.  "Since the day I met you, Casey."

"So…"

"So we're gonna go from here, man," Dan said, smiling easily up at him.  'Cause I know you, and you're wanting to plan things and date things and romanticize things… but I'm not going to let you over-plan us," he said, laughing slightly as he leaned in.  "And right now, I'm going to kiss you."

"Okay, but Danny," Casey said hesitantly, his eyes zeroing in on Dan's.  "Don't do this cause you want me to be happy… don't do this cause you think you have to, that it's some duty as a best friend to…"

Dan laughed, grabbing Casey's shirt and pulling him forward quickly, their lips meshing together perfectly.  Dan's thinner lips and Casey's fuller ones seemingly melding into one another as they took each other's breath away.  Before Casey could deepen the kiss Dan was pulling away and still laughing, looking up into Casey's eyes and causing Casey to begin to chuckle as well.  

"We should go inside," he said softly, letting go of Casey's white dress shirt.

"Yeah," Casey said, his hands lifting and resting on Dan's shoulders.  "Cause who knows… the women might just be around now."


End file.
